In “All Those Who Wander”, we see the Enterprise away team visit the crashed Peregrine, find frozen and/or mutilated bodies of the crew outside and inside, two survivors inside, and a log from the captain explaining that they’d picked up three castaways, one of whom (an Orion) killed himself with a plasma grenade to prevent the Gorn eggs he was previously infected with from hatching, and this caused the crash. We don’t ever get a detailed explanation of what happened.
Memory Alpha says:
After a week of contending with the Gorn, Gavin and her remaining crew, numbering approximately twenty out of an initial complement of ninety-nine, decided to lure the hatchlings outside to protect their civilian passengers. However, in doing so all of them would succumb to hypothermia or Gorn attacks.
( https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/USS_Peregrine )
This leaves a lot of open questions:
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The Gorn eggs inside Buckley can be explained by him having been infected before the Peregrine picked him up (gestation period can vary per species) or having been sprayed by a Gorn before the Enterprise away team arrives. But what happened to the Gorn that the Peregrine’s crew were originally fighting?
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Do we just assume that the Peregrine crew’s plan worked, all those Gorn were lured outside, and then died in the cold somewhere that their bodies were not found, instead of getting back inside? If the plan worked, where are the civilian passengers? Did one or more Gorn stay inside/go back and kill them? If so, where’s that Gorn?
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The Orion blew himself up, and this damaged the ship enough to crash, but did not kill the Gorn inside him, as they were still able to attack the crew. That seems a bit of a stretch.
It’s a great episode (and 100% fine by me they’re borrowing from Alien lore to develop the Gorn as antagonists), but 2/3 viewings later these seem like gaping oversights. Could it be some sort of big play for later when we discover something like a Gorn ship arrived there before the Enterprise and interfered with the crash site/beamed Gorn off?
We have to accept that Gorn biology has no tolerance at all for subfreezing temperatures. The Gorn young are functioning at an instinctual level, they would learn by lethal experience. Unlike the adult Gorn in 2 x 10, they would not have the protection of environmental suits.
As I would very much love for Hemmer to be somehow still alive, having survived the fall and a period of low temperature semi-hibernation, anything that brings Starfleet back for follow up would be welcome.
I’m going with assumption that the plan to lure the more developed Gorn outside was successful, but could not address any new ‘infections’ in survivors. Hemmer repeated the plan, but as an Aenar, evolved for extreme subzero temperatures, and more physically robust than a human, there’s no reason to believe he died, no matter that he was willing to sacrifice himself for his shipmates. (I’m willing to go with his using his abilities and some kind of sharp tool to stop his fall and find a crevice to hibernate in.)
I suppose “Gorn just die very quickly in the cold” is the simplest explanation, but still leaves a lot open.
I’d love for Hemmer to return, but feel like the sheer height of the fall makes it quite conclusive that he’d die. Maybe I’ll “warm” to the idea (see what I did there?) if the writers can make it work reasonably. It would be particularly fitting if Hemmer’s unique physiology was the thing that means he can survive, as his preference for the cold is the opposite of the Gorn, and he even says “Just like Andoria!” before he jumps jumps off. Maybe if Batel is able to be saved from her Gorn infection, the new medical knowledge could be used to save Hemmer if he is indeed semi-frozen/hibernating or something. It could make for some interesting further development of the Aenar race also.
The possibility of revisiting the specifics of this episode could be why they’ve left these loose ends that I’m questioning in the OP.